Week 4 - "CCM Day 30, I think"

Hi All! This week went by pretty fast I guess. Ok I´ll just jump right in.  

Wednesday: Happy Bday to Maren first of all! We went to the temple again and it was super cool. I did a lot of it without wearing the headphones translating to English and I understood most of it which was super cool! We are doing a thing now where we go on splits with a latino companion and teach a lesson together and it helps my spanish so much. I'll get a pic with him next week.

Thursday: So every week I read my journal from the past week and write about what happened each day and for Thursday I wrote half a page about the cinnamon french toast we had for breakfast! So it is kinda hard to say what I did that day. Today was the first day I really did a lesson without notes at all and it went pretty well! Ok so we played hide-n-go seek in our casa at night with all our lights out and it was thee best game of hide-n-go seek I've ever played. I highly recommend it.

Friday: Woke up and played basketball. I listened to a talk by Ezra Taft Benson called "Beware Of Pride." It's really good. Nothing special today.

Saturday: So our afternoon teacher, Hermano Gonzalez, is so cool. He went to Spain to go to hair school or whatever that is called, but he won't cut our hair. Our sister training leaders got mad at us tonight for no reason, so that was fun.

Sunday: Sundays are always really good. Sacrament was good. Peterson and I taught Priesthood, and then after that we studied outside for like 2 hours just reading the Book of Mormon. Guys, the Book of Mormon is so cool! Studying here has helped me see a lot of things I never would've seen before. The devotionals were good too. We watched a talk by Pres. Holland.

Monday: Most of the day, we just chilled and read scriptures and studied and relaxed outside. I memorized 3 scriptures today in Spanish, Moroni 7:33, 2 Nefi 31:10, and 1 Nefi 3:7. 

Tuesday: Today we did Spanish for as much of the day as we could and it was actually not that bad. I really wish I knew non-gospel words too. Not much happened today.

So I forget what day I listened to it and what it was called, but I listened to a talk about emulating the character of Christ. It was so good! I encourage everyone to read your scriptures and find scriptures that describe the character of Christ. It's really cool.

Well that's all for me this week! I'll talk to y'all next week. :)

Elder Q

(Really, son?? The ONLY pic this week of his latest tie purchase... silly kid!)

Week 3 - PB and Nutella Sandwiches and Lots of Isaiah

Hey there! Ok to start off, last week I forgot to tell y'all that my district accidentally found a post that shocks you. Like, the welding on it is super bad or the wiring is messed up, but when you touch certain parts of it and then you touch the metal on the benches it shocks you! We call it the Iron Rod and it is catching on so quickly. It's hilarious! Everyone knows about the Iron Rod. 

Friday: We drove to the immigration place, but I think I already told y'all about that day. 

Saturday: Just so everyone know, the food here isn't bad. But it definitely is NOT good. I usually have a toasted put butter and Nutella sandwich with every meal. For gym today, we just took a nap and then played tennis (we had like 2 hours for gym today), so that was nice. Has anyone played extreme tic tac toe? Because when no one wants to study, we all just play that. It's a blast. We had a little fiesta with the latinos in our casa because they are leaving Monday.

Sunday: A little stressful because it was my first Sunday as ZL and I didn't know what to do, but I figured it out. All the lessons were really good. We found out that a district from another zone is being put in our zone so now we are in charge of about 50 people, 5 districts.

Monday: Sad day today because a bunch of people I know are leaving. I'll include their pics. I had 5 whole pnut butter and Nutella sandwiches today, so if I die, I apologize. I found this quote from Pres Bednar: "It's more about who you are and what you are than what you say." It came from a really good devotional talk about the character of Christ.

Tuesday: Good day, but a super super long day. First of all, why is 2 Nefi (Nephi in spanish) like 100 chapters of just Isaiah?? It is killing me but it's good. I started the BOM over yesterday and I'm already at 2 Nefi 15. Instead of gym we took another nap. haha We do get enough sleep, but naps are the best. Awesome part of the day! Savannah Flanary and Amelia McEwan showed up at the CCM today! It was so, so cool to see people I know. Plus Hermana Flanary is in my zone, so I get to talk to her every once in awhile.

And Today we are going to the temple again which will be so cool. After the temple, we are teaching an investigator with a latino helping us. 

Anyway, love you guys! Miss ya, I wanna hear about what's going on. Especially sports stuff. The guys here would honestly pay good pesos for some juicy sports news. Anyway, talk to ya next week!

-Elder Quizzle

 Elders Peterson and Quist

Elder Chable my homie, love this guy.

 Casa pic

 Elder Hernandez. Funniest hombre in the casa.

 Elder Castro was the OG and he was ZL too.

Elder Decocq on the left and Elder Lake on the right, both going to Bolivia. Elder Decocq is so funny, idk why he isn't smiling.

Week 2 - More MTC fun!

Hey guys! Everything is bueno down here, not as much rain because the rainy season just ended, but it rained a few times. The Spanish is good. Yesterday was hard. Our teachers made us speak Spanish the whole day and whoever in our district spoke English the most had to buy the winners a candy from the tienda. I didn't lose, don't worry. It's been awhile since last pday and I'll explain why.

Wednesday:  After emailing, we went to the temple. It was soooooo cool. It is one of 5 temples where Moroni is holding the plates, but it was such a cool session. I bought 2 sock ties and a cool ring at this store that is connnected to the temple grounds. The traffic in Mexico City is crazy still.

Thursday:  First relatively clear day since I've been here, kinda weird. I really love studying the scriptures now. I wish I knew before what I know now about studying and how to study and what to look for. It's one of my favorite things to do now.   

Friday:  We studied forever today. We had like 9 hours of just study time in our classroom. It drove me insane. I wore one of my new sock ties, not to brag but dang I looked good in that tie...

 

Saturday:  So we have this thing called TALL (idk what it stands for) where we use this one program on the computers and it helps sooooo much, and I can listen to music on LDS.org, but today I listened to 4 talks from conference in like, idk, the 80s? They were good. Hinckley is my man. Our lesson with Hermano Gonzalez was really good this afternoon. It was about 1 Nephi Ch 1. It has a lot more meaning than I ever could have thought. Our lessons didn't go well last week, but this week we got our investigator to commit to baptism the first lesson which was kinda a miracle for us.

Sunday:  Fasting here is so hard. So guess what! Our zone leaders are leaving tomorrow soooooo me and Elder Peterson, the elders who've been here 13 days, are Zone Leaders! I like it cause I'm not assistant ZL, like I was for DL, we are both ZL's. In our district meeting, we were sharing spiritual thoughts and it was really great. It finally rained again today. We have 3 devotionals every Sunday so that's fun.

Monday:  I got soup on one of my shirts, but besides that it was just a normal day.

Tuesday:  In our morning class with Hermana Gutierrez, we played Red Light Green Light outside on the tennis courts. It was hilarious. We had to teach her how to play and she was so confused. Four square during gym was intense. I finally got little sticky note tab things for my scriptures from the tienda so that basically made my day. I finished marking all the scripture mastery in English and Spanish. Elder Davis from one of the other rooms in the casa broke the window by the front door tonight. hahahaha he's a punk but I love him. 

Wednesday:  The latinos in our casa are our homies. They teach us lots of stuff, and sometimes some funny slang words, but they are leaving in a week so that's sad. Everyone go listen to Gordon B Hinckley's talk "Don't Drop the Ball" from Conference in 1994. It is so good! Visited the new district today as Zone Leaders. It was weird.

Thursday:  I woke up today and ran along the entire interior of the wall with Elder Tolman and then went to the gym. It felt so good to just run. We had to speak Spanish all day today, no English at all, and it was super hard but it made me realize how much I actually know so I didn't hate it.

Friday:  Today we drove 2 HOURS away from the CCM to this government building and we did our VISA stuff. That's why I had my pday today and not Wednesday. It'll be Wednesday next week.

I miss everyone! If you are wondering what it's like here or have any questions about anything, just send me an email. So ya, say hi, drop a line. 

Love y'all!    

-Davis

Week 1 - Elder Quist Makes it to México City!

Hola from the Say-Say-Em-Ay (CCM)!

HEY MOM. I love it here! Not in a mean way, but I am not homesick at all. Like I miss y'all but I love it here. Ok so I'm gonna be all over the place so bear with me. The first day, well first few days, were crazy. I was like 5 rows behind first class so I got a super nice window seat. Yeah I flew here with like 40 other missionaries... It was kinda funny. So we get here and we load the busses with luggage and everyone gets in and we are about to leave the airport and then the Fedarale (the po po) shows up and gives all the buses a ticket and it took an hour and a half to figure out so instead of getting to the CCM at 5 we got there at about 7. 

So if you know me, I love the rain and I now know for a fact that God sent me here for a reason and that reason is it rains everyday. I can't think of a time when there weren't clouds above us. It's thee best, not many people like it but I love it. So the CCM used to be a rich private school thing so all the classes are in different buildings and the weather is so nice we nearly always keep the windows and doors open. But since everthing is in different buildings everything is super spread out so we walk a lot (I haven't weighed myself but I hope I haven't gained weight). Fun fact Elders at the CCM usually gain about 15lbs if they are here for 6 weeks. So. Don't judge me when I'm fat. 

So there are 2 dorms and then like 50 casas, I live in a casa. The casas have a living room and table and then there is a kitchen but the door to it is locked cause we never have to cook anything, then a laundry room. Down a hallway is 5 rooms with 2 bunkbeds, so 4 people in each room, but my comp and I got lucky and it's only the two of us in our room so we have more space to put stuff and we can sleep in later, I love it and thank the lord for this blessing everyday haha. So my companion, Elder Peterson, is from Idaho Falls. He went to Idaho Falls High School and we are going to the same mission. 

So yeah we have a room to ourselves and we wake up at 5:50 am every once in awhile to play basketball with a bunch of other Elders. We have 6 latino Elders in our casa and they are hilarious. We talk with them every night and it helps our spanish a ton. Um let's seeeeee. We have two teachers, a morning teacher and an afternoon teacher. Our afternoon teacher is always kind of a grump but he's cool, he is also our fake investigator, Omar. Our morning teacher is my homie, she is hilarious. My district is me and mi compañero, 2 other elders going to Chalco as well (we are the only 4 going to Chalco in the CCM), umm 2 hermanas going to Uruguay Montevideo as well as 3 elders, and then one elder going to Chile somewhere, it's a good district. The food here is so bland but I mean I'm still alive so I guess the food is good enough. 

Let's see.. OH OK GUYS, every, I don't know, 30 minutes? some loud explosion goes off outside the CCM and we can see the smoke from it and we asked our teachers about them and all they said was "crazy mexicans.. they'll celebrate anything and literally people (my district thinks it is just one guy doing it cause they all come from the same place) here just set off huge fireworks. No joke, these fireworks are enormous, but they don't look pretty or have colors or anything it's just like giant firecrackers. Y'all can't even comprehend these things, it is so weird. Oh I just realized I forgot to tell you about the bus ride from the airport. It was insane. I don't know how I am alive, there are traffic laws here (a fact I don't believe) but no one follows them and they don't really paint lines on the road so I THINK it was a 3 lane highway but I'm not sure. And people just stand on the side of the road and they don´t move when a car (or bus) comes and every car just cuts all the other cars off but everyone is so chill about it, it's liked organized chaos. It took us almost an hour and a half to go about 3 miles. Thankfully our bus driver is like a mexican NASCAR driver so I'm still alive.

Also general conference was amazing! One of the best. So one of the highlights so far is this guy I met at the airport, Elder Crook? but everyone knows him as Paraguy. He's going to Paraguay and he is hilarious, we love him. I took a pic with him, I'll try to attach it.

The spanish is going well. I love learning so it hasn't been bad yet. I love meeting new people. Every other morning or so Elder Peterson and I wake up at 5:50 and go play basketball with like 12 other guys so that is fun. Elder P is district leader too so technically I am too so that is fun. I don't know what else to say so I'll talk to y'all next week (which will be next Friday not Wednesday, idk why). Also I'm goin to the temple today and I'm gonna buy a bunch of ties. ANYWAY I LOVE YOU ALL!

Hasta luego, 

Elder Q.

Flying into México City

 General Conference Churros

 P-day at the Temple

México México City Chalco Mission!

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

A day after his 19th birthday, Elder Quist is finally off to México City! We are so proud of Davis and are excited for his adventure and experiences as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is so ready for this! We love you Elder!

 Happy and already making friends!

A very short email letting us know that he made it safely:

HEY GUYS I'm doing good. Long day. Traffic is insane here, I don't know how we didn't get in a wreck. Anyway we have just been chillin at the airport and just recently the CCM. Just writing to tell you I got here ok and my p-days are Wednesday, BUT not tomorrow, next Wednesday. So yeah! I hope y'all got home safely! I'll email next week.

Frequently checking the CCM (México City MTC) Facebook page, we finally found him! 

(a few Elders in from the right)